THE DISCOVERY OF THE PHARAOHS. 165 
published. Even the official account given by M. Maspero 
the then director of the museum at Bulak, is not altogether 
correct. 
During the three weeks which we remained at Luxor, my 
travelling companion and I were thrown a great deal into the 
company of the Arabs who had been instrumental in making 
the discovery, and as our interest was much excited by the 
strangeness of the story, we endeavoured by careful inquiries 
in all available quarters to arrive at a full and complete his- 
tory of the affair. To get the plain unvarnished truth about 
anything in the east is a matter of no little difficulty. The 
oriental standard of veracity is altogether different from that 
of western nations, and one has often to approach the subject 
in a very roundabout Way, even in cases where the interests 
of the man from whom you are trying to get information are 
in no way involved. An Arab’s first endeavour is to find out 
what sort of information you want, and he will then generally 
supply it to you out of pure politeness. However, in this case 
by examining as great a number of witnesses as possible and 
comparing their stories, we did at last arrive at a solid sub- 
stratum of truth. 
I can here only give you a mere sketch of the story, the 
Principal actor in which was a most amiable and benevolent 
looking old Arab, Abd er Rasoul Ahmed, who stood to me for 
his portrait in the Ramesseum. He is the eldest of the Abd 
er Rasoul family of five, and lives in a small mud house on 
the Theban side of the river, by the tombs of Sheikh Abd el 
Kurnah, just behind the Ramesseum. 
A few hundred yards behind this old Arab’s house the 
scarred and barren limestone hills which separate the The- 
ban plain from the valley of the tombs rise up in steep, 
rugged, and inaccessible cliffs, which are cut back into a 
series of natural amphitheatres, or corries. separated from one 
another by spurs of rock. 
In one of these natural recesses, and at some distance up 
